He woke up right at 7:30 when I turned on the TV to try to watch the World Cup match. After he got up, he spotted his Dr. Seuss backpack and wanted to wear it and really liked it.
We headed to the motor home at 9. Cherie made french toast with yogurt and blueberries and syrup. She taught him the word ‘miniscule’. He spent more time with the sink and flushing and asking questions about the plumbing. They went to the bedroom and came back with Candy Land and Chutes and Ladders. They played Candy Land. August, before he won, said “Yeah, well while we were playing I turned it into a winning game. I like winning.” We played with the splat balls and we did slo-mo videos of them. August and Cherie then played Chutes and Ladders. He learned “Jimminy Christmas” from Cherie. She told him the stories in the game and they talked about which were natural and imposed consequences. And he chose being sick over not having candy for a week when given the choice of consequences.
We left at 11 and drove to Portland. August played some Magnus Kingdom on the way. He was acting pretty sleepy by the time we got there but ended up not taking a nap all day. Kind of surprising considering all the time we spent driving.
We knocked on Spenser’s door and called him. No answer. So we walked up to Monsoon Thai and sat outside. Ordered pad see ew and peanut curry with shrimp. For drinks we got a mango juice and an iced Thai coffee and an iced Thai iced tea. He played the We Aargh Pirates game. He mainly ate the pad see ew as the curry was a bit spicy. But he dared the spice enough to eat three and a half shrimp.
When we got the check she brought three hard candies. August said “I know I’m full, but if I notice a treat, I want it.” He didn’t actually like it all that well (he said it was too big) and we threw it in the bushes. As we were walking back he was repeating “Biannual, decade, score…”
We got in the car and Carly dropped us off at the OMSI. We bought tickets and started exploring at 2:30. We started in the space hall, which isn’t actually very big. He mainly played in a Gemini capsule, pretending to be an astronaut. We then went to the general exhibits and played with a big musical instrument. We went to the end of the room and spent a lot of time with the wind stuff: making paper fly up through the tubes into the air, making a wind scuplture, folding a paper airplane, etc. Then the shipping containers and cranes and scanning the shipping containers to see what was in. There were then activities on water pressure and tsunami waves that he played with.
From there we went upstairs and across to the topographic map area. There, you played with sand, scooping it into hills and valleys, and a projector from above projected a topographic map on top of it. Very cool. Left that when he needed to use the bathroom. Found the life science area and wandered around there, and ended up at the food waste pinball game, playing that with other kids for quite awhile. We spent a few minutes in the minerals area, then played with the wine turbines.
Next big thing was the permafrost exhibit, with an area where you built things with Lincoln logs and then saw what happens when the ground lowers. Played and played with that. He said “You’re all the people in Africa dying…this is your food storage…” Not sure where he’s heard of famines… And then there was a fossil fuels whack-a-mole sort of game. Played a few rounds of that.
From there he said he wanted to control the robots he had seen. He led me back to the general hall and to the robot four-in-a-row game. We watched a game finished up, then he played. He didn’t like that it was a winning game. And when he lost he handled it well, but as we walked away he was clearly frustrated and talked about how it was stupid.
We went to the google.org robot exhibit. The downstairs was okay, but not spectacular. But he had fun controlling a robot, watching a robot tour guide, and playing with the robot grips. He liked the Roomba display and had me act out going to work. He would then have the Roomba clean, and I’d come home to find everything clean. But upstairs was where the excitement was. they had these cubes that you could build into a robot, and we spent a half hour or so there, adding pieces to a robot and changing them around. The only disappointment was that the dancing robot show was done for the day, even though there was still more than two hours left of the day.
He did a few levels on a screen that had a coding game like the ones he played in coding class, then we exited through the gift shop. August wouldn’t let me look at the gift shops at all, which was probably good for the bank account. I was tempted by a mug with a robot on it.
Outside the exhibit he played with the tilting labyrinth game, then we found the 6 and under play area. It was now past 6 and starting to clear out. There were only a couple kids there when we got there. August ended up playing with the only other kid in the sand area and with the ball/tube area. That kid left and we had the whole place to ourselves for the last 20 minutes. August set up a shop in the shop area and showed me his “wares”. He sold me some canned goods and stew and we finished by having a tea party (reminded me of having tea in the little kids area at the children’s museum in Seoul) and helping pick up some of the balls, veggies, and fruits.
Played with a windmill sort of thing, then he found a nickel on the ground. I told him we could take it downstairs and drop it in one of the funnel things. We went down to do that. It wasn’t a donation thing, but the balls were missing so we used the nickel anyway. But he dropped it on its side Nd it fell right in. I tried to grab it but missed. You could reach in down below, but it had bounced somehow and was nowhere to be seen. It was 7, so I just left it. He seemed okay with that at the time.
We went outside and took a selfie outside the science museum (like outside the one in Seoul), then met Carly right after 7. When she asked him how it was he said “The winning game was stupid, the colored sand was stupendous.” He was then worrying about the nickel: “Is it okay that I broke the rules with the coin?” He was afraid it would get stuck inside the ball path area.
On the way to see Spenser I told him he should sing “Better Not Wake the Baby” for him as the Decemberists are from Portland. August told me “It’s not from the Decemberists. I made it up inside me and sent it out through a cord into the car and out the speakers.” He laughed at his own story. “At Spenser’s house I’ll attach the cord to the wall and it will come out the stereo.”
We got to his house and Spenser met us outside. He gave August a present wrapped in yellow tissue paper. Lots of it. August thought it was funny as he kept unwrapping and unwrapping. It was a plastic robot toy that walked when you wound it up. He was thrilled by it.
We started walking to Monsoon Thai again to get mango sticky rice. Would have taken about an hour as August was playing with the robot. I picked him up. At the restaurant, August initially sat next to me. But when he had an opportunity, he climbed up next to Spenser and asked “What rules do you break?” They had a hilarious discussion about nose picking and going backwards on an escalator. And dams. August showed him the Magnus Kingdom app and they played that together. It was really cool to see the two of them together and I wish we could have August spend more time with him.
While we were gone, Carly and Spenser had gone to Peter’s bar (although Peter was out of town) and played card games with a couple of Spenser’s friends from the bar. Spenser told Carly about moving out of his last apartment and his bicycle accident last year.
We said goodbye and drove over to a grocery store. Picked up food out of the salad/food bar and a small container of strawberries. Then drove to our hotel in Vancouver. In the elevator,
on our way up to our hotel on the third floor, he also pushed the button for 2. He had a hilarious giggle as it opened and closed at 2. There was a mom who was very understanding and her daughter who was 6 or 7. They found it funny, and apparently the girl had tripped and hit the ‘call’ button the day before.
We got to our room and ate dinner. He ate the mac and cheese and some veggies and several strawberries, once I bit off the tops. Carly took a shower and he had us acting out his cord attached to the car and playing songs though the speakers to unsuspecting drivers game. Got him ready for bed (skipped a shower) and he was asleep at 10:30.
